


A Correspondence of Angels

by Triskaidekalogue



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Historical, F/F, Poetry, Sestina
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-16
Updated: 2011-11-16
Packaged: 2017-10-26 04:21:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/278628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Triskaidekalogue/pseuds/Triskaidekalogue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jade finds herself stranded on a different sort of island.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Correspondence of Angels

I can almost see you still, your solemn air,  
your sweet and somber grace. Your fingers, I remember,  
danced kindness across my back. The shade they cast --  
did I dream it? -- fell bruise-dark on my sun-brown skin  
and, on lifting, took my bruises too. In all the earth  
only you have shared my smiles, my tears, my laughter.

How joy would have withered without you, the laughter  
of snow-swelled streams drowned by men's cruel barbs! They'd air  
their crudest jests -- mock my dress, my bearing -- but cool earth  
drank all their words, when your arms taught me to remember  
compassion; I mapped your otherworldly skin  
and rediscovered wonder in its fey, jade-white cast.

Leaving the hometown, my audience was a cast  
of scornful neighbors, fellow-workers whose sly laughter  
hummed, like mosquitos, and stuck to the skin.  
I preferred our goodbye, pine needles underfoot, air  
ablaze with light. I kissed you. I'll remember  
that kiss always: the feel of you, the warmth of the earth.

Here there's only concrete, and I think the earth  
outside it must be just as cold and hard. I've been cast  
into this pen -- how long, I don't remember --  
safe in facelessness, but my senses starve for laughter  
and new grass. How strange: the lover of a being of air  
buried, though aboveground, steel and canvas pressed to skin!

They test us, with barbed questions that long to skin  
our minds raw and honest, to peel back those shades of earth  
that might conceal unwelcome flesh. Perhaps air  
is wealth, here -- are we thieves? is that what carves the stone cast  
of their eyes? I'd picture them sparked to laughter --  
but I can't, not when I've a forged life to remember.

I'll gladly forget it all, though, to remember  
you: discard this false, freeing history; shed this skin  
sewn from hope and paper lies. It's your laughter  
I crave most, that quiet delight which brought me to earth  
or sent me reeling, exhilarated, cast  
by your jubilance high into the welcoming air.

O you who gave back my laughter: well do I remember.  
I'll meet you again when open air returns to kiss my skin,  
as you did once -- half an earth away -- this battered outcast.

**Author's Note:**

> The historicity of the background here -- aside, of course, from _xianren_ being moved to comfort much-harassed gender-variant manual laborers -- is completely and utterly suspect. I apologize and humbly beg forgiveness of any and every person who knows better.


End file.
